Who knew that humankind’s very existence depended on women’s silence in the face of abuse?

The truth, of course, is that there’s no war on romance: the majority of outed abusers are being accused of rape, serial harassment and exposing their genitals to unwilling women. Not exactly the stuff of office flirtation.

We created the #MeToo movement. Now it's time for #HerToo

Merkin says, “stripping sex of eros isn’t the solution”. But whose “eros” are we really worried about? As Vox journalist Laura McGann put it this week at a media event, “I don’t see this uprising of 22-year-old women saying, ‘I want the right to sleep with my boss.’”

As has been the case for so long, the backlash to #MeToo is about what men want and protecting their right to have it.

There’s a reason so many people are conflating bad and sometimes criminal behavior with romance: traditional ideas about seduction rely on tropes of women witholding sex and men working hard to get it. It’s a narrow notion of heterosexuality – one that does a good job excusing abusive behavior.

“Trying to seduce someone, even persistently or cack-handedly, is not [a crime],” Deneuve’s letter read. Not always, that’s true. But when it’s considered “natural” for men to doggedly pursue women – even those who have made it clear they’re not interested – we make it easier for a predator to claim he was just following a normal romantic script.

Perhaps instead of mourning the loss of office “flirtations”, we should consider the idea that some women never liked them much to begin with.